It is
now commonplace to describe the current American political system as
“dysfunctional.” Most people know that instinctively or through personal
experience. However, what most Americans do not know is exactly why their
government doesn’t function the way it used to. If you are among that group, I
am eager to inform you that the answers are in a new
book.

The book
is, “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System
Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.” The authors are Thomas Mann, a
senior fellow in Governance Studies at the (centrist) Brookings Institution and
Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the (conservative) American Enterprise
Institute.

Mann and
Ornstein are among the brightest and best informed political scientists in the
country. What they write is not just another “pox on both their houses” look at
what has happened to the American political system. You may not agree with their
conclusions, but it’s important that you understand that Mann and Ornstein are
among the very few official scorers of the American game of politics who
consistently make their calls without fear or favor from any political party or
candidate. Their work is widely respected both for its scholarship and because
it is untainted by partisan politics. That’s why this book really is a “must
read” for anyone who cares about what is happening to this
country.

The
authors launched their new book just two weeks ago, with an Op-Ed column in the
Washington Post, under the eye-grabbing headline, “ Let’s Just Say It:
Republicans are the Problem.” As they put it, “In our past writings, we have
criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however we
have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the
Republican Party.”

Next
came the sentence from the book which was sure to receive the greatest attention
because it sums up their remarkably candid analysis of today’s party of
Lincoln.

“The GOP
has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically
extreme; contemptuous of inherited social and economic policy; scornful of
compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and
science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but
declaring war on the government.”

This new
book is not a tome but a slender volume of just over 200 pages. Nevertheless it
persuasively supports that dramatic assertion. Here is the flavor of a few of
its many compelling arguments.

- What
happened to the GOP? After noting the realignment of the South following the
Civil Rights bills of the 1960s after which most Southern Democrats became
Republicans, Mann and Ornstein go right for the jugular.

“The real move to the
bedrock right starts with two names; Newt Gingrich and Grover
Norquist.”

-
Gingrich entered Congress in 1979. His eagerness “to paint his own institution
(when Democrats controlled it) as elitist, corrupt and arrogant…..undermined
basic public trust in Congress and government….His attacks on partisan
adversaries in the White House and Congress created a norm in which colleagues
with different views became mortal enemies.” Gingrich got his House Republican
majority, but “the forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed
across party lines (and) activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington
base.”

-Norquist
founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and his Tax Payer Protection Pledge the
following year. In the current congressional term, “the pledge, which binds
signers to never support a tax increase (and that includes closing tax
loopholes) has been signed by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of 47 GOP
senators.” The failure of a Congressional Republican to sign Norquist’s pledge,
or even consider compromises with the Democrats, can be political suicide for
Republicans seeking re-election. (Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, who served six
senate terms as a respected, moderate foreign policy specialist, was the
hard-line conservatives’ latest victim last Tuesday when he lost his primary bid
to the Tea Party candidate by 20 points)

- House
majority leader Eric Cantor gets special credit for inspiring last year’s, “debt
ceiling fiasco.” Cantor is fingered for deliberately jeopardizing the credit
rating of the United
States for partisan political
leverage.

The
Filibuster was once relegated to a handful of major issues in a given Congress.

Under
senate rules (there is nothing about filibusters in the Constitution) it takes
sixty votes to prevent a filibuster. That means 41 Republicans can and do now
use the filibuster as a routine weapon – for instance to block nominees to
agencies such as the Consumer Protection Bureau as a way to keep laws that were
legitimately enacted from being implemented. “Since Obama’s inauguration in 2009
the filibuster is more often a stealth weapon, which minority Republicans use
not to highlight an important national issue but to delay and obstruct quietly
on nearly all matters including routine and widely supported ones. It is fair to
say this pervasive use of the filibuster has never before happened in the
history of the senate.”

-The
authors are critical of the news media for basically missing the most important
political story of the last three decades: the transformation of the Republican
party. They also reject the media’s tendency to “convey the impression that the
two sides are equally implicated.” They are not. “We understand the values of
mainstream journalists…..but a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon
distorts reality. Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety
through the even-handed unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which
politicians are telling the truth? Who is taking hostages? Look ahead to the
likely consequences of voters choices in the November elections.” (That is the
substance too often missing.)

The
title of Mann and Ornstein’s book and the last words in their Post column are
obviously not optimistic. Only if the voters “punish ideological extremism at
the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all
dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will
have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get
worse before it gets better.”